6 Mile Chicken Tractor Build

[sLOWdJonny9]

Hello to all at BYC,

As mentioned in my intro, my name is Jon and I live in the foothills of East TN. 8 weeks ago we got 3 Rhode Island Reds and 3 Black Jersey Giants. During these past 8 weeks, I built the chicken tractor pictured below. Its definitely far from perfect and I'd do a few things differently the next time but overall I'm very satisfied with the result. And based on the ladies behavior since they moved in, I'd say they're pretty happy with it also. I'm still putting on a few finishing touches and tweaking it here and there so I'll be sure to add more pics as the project progresses.

 

[sourland]

Looks good to me.

 

[Meg-in-MT]

Hello, Jon. It looks like you did a great job on the tractor! Thank you for sharing pictures.

 

[Molpet]

Looks good, what would you do different?

 

[sLOWdJonny9]

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

Differently?
1) Put the ramp on the same side as the nesting box access door.
2) We've had a lot of rain recently here in E TN so the ground is very soft. The weight of the tractor is still manageable but the small wheels sink into the ground a bit. I may end up switching over to some old bicycle wheels that I have lying around.
3) For much of the framework I wish I would've used more 2"x3"s than 2"x4"s. I feel that it would've saved some weight without sacrificing much strength.
4) I would make the aluminum roofing panels longer so that they overhang a little farther to protect my underlayer better.

Thats all I can think of for now, thanks for asking.

 

[aart]

Looks pretty cool, might be tight space for 6 birds tho.

 

[sLOWdJonny9]

Good point aart. Here in about a month Im going to build a larger, more portable "run-only" out of some 2x4's and PVC pipe. Around here we call em "hoop houses".

Thanks and Happy Trails!